Habits for Highly Visual Teachers

Main stage, Teaching & learning, Technology No Responses »
Sep 052010

School has started. New classes are underway, new names and faces are starting to become familiar. New routines are being established. As we teach with more technology and as we consider how to make use of more visual images to help students learn, (because we know they are effective for visual learners), what might be some good habits to establish?

My students frequently search for images for a variety of reasons and so spending time exploring the ethics of using images, is the flip side to knowing where to find them. I explore the similarities and differences between text and images as intellectual property. Most students have been taught at some point about how to use and reference text. Why would images be different?

Two sites I recommend that search images posted on Flickr but allow students to narrow the selection to images with a ‘Creative Common’ designation are:

Compfight
“Search engine for visual inspiration and free stock photos for the advertising community including images of creative commons and public domain.”















Flickr-storm
“FlickrStorm is a better search for Flickr! It works by looking for more than what you enter to find related and more relevant images… Be suprised! …” This site also allows you to collect a series of images in a ‘bucket’ and download a thumbnail with the URL to make it easy for students to cite sources.












Richard Byrne at Free technology for Teachers also has a couple of great posts on visual images; 7 Places and ways to Find Copyright-friendly images, and one about resources for Teaching Copyright.

Whether for inspiration, reference or remixing, we need to teach students to think and act with integrity when using images.

Posted by Glen at 2:24 am Tagged with: , ,

3 'New' Challenges as school starts

Main stage, Teaching & learning No Responses »
Aug 112010

What is it about ‘new’ that is challenging? Why do some of us find ‘new’ easy, and others stress out? Here are three ‘new’ challenges (or changes) that I’ve been thinking about as the school year approaches:

1. New Technology

New versions and updates always get rolled out at the start of the school year (which does make sense.) Our Blackboard course has been updated and I’m glad we have the new version. However, right now I just want to update and add new material to my courses, and the new version has presented an extra barrier to getting ready for class. When we are coming to terms with new tech I’m sure our tech department must think we look like this….

How does timing impact the way ‘new’ learning challenges are perceived?

2. New Students, New Teachers, New Admin

colored ink painting

There’s usually some anticipation associated with introductions and getting to know new classes, new colleagues we’ll work with and new leaders. Will we connect? (Will they understand my accent?)

School is like a glass of water. Add a new person and their distinctive color does add a new dimension to the whole color scheme. Established systems have a familiarity and security that can be very comfortable but new people bring new ideas and fresh insight.

How can we embrace the new and honor the past?

3. New Educational Horizon

From individual challenges to school challenges to the biggest challenge for our whole profession; the relevance of the school system as I am part of it is most definitely something I know I need to keep thinking about. From The Partnership of 21st Century Skills.

The 21st Century isn’t coming; it’s already here. And our students have the opportunity and challenge of living and working in a diverse and rapidly changing world…schools must prepare our young people to understand and address global issues, and educators must re-examine their teaching strategies and curriculum so that all students can thrive in this global and interdependent society.
Global Competence is a 21st Century Imperative – Dennis Van Roekel, NAE President.

As I re-examine what and how I teach, how much will I need to change to be relevant in this approaching new horizon?

Posted by Glen at 12:11 am Tagged with: , ,

'Setting the table' for the new school year

Design, Main stage No Responses »
Aug 062010
IMG_2229

Along with updating my Blackboard site, my unit plans and assessment tasks, I thought it might be time to upgrade the look of my blog was well.

I’ve been trying to catch up on reading my RSS feeds and I took note of a post from e1evaition on ‘Top 10 Free WordPress 3.0 Ready themes’ via specky.com. I ended up with Suffusion which I like because it is quite flexible enabling me to customize the look. It’s clean and has options the older theme didn’t offer. So Voila! Here is the new look blog.

Posted by Glen at 3:17 am Tagged with:

What's my standard?

Main stage, Teaching & learning, Technology No Responses »
Aug 042010

I’ve been working on updating my Blackboard courses in preparation for the start of school. As I have been considering what I might do differently and how I can ‘update’ my curriculum units to personalize and differientiate learning, technology has been much on my mind.

So the piece in Education Week on the new draft  Teacher Standards put out by CCSSO was nice confirmation of my pondering.

…they’re meant to guide teachers at all levels of their career, with more-experienced teachers exhibiting the practices in more-sophisticated ways.

In addition, the standards put more emphasis on teachers’ ability to use assessment data to support instruction, to address cultural and linguistic diversity in the student population, and to harness technology as a tool to support learning.

Continue reading »

Posted by Glen at 12:29 am Tagged with: ,

Personalizing and differientiating learning in AP Art

Main stage, Teaching & learning, Technology No Responses »
Jul 292010

Here is my challenge:

  • 2 classes of AP Studio Art.
  • 4 variations of the three exam types offered in AP Studio Art (Drawing, 3D Design, and 2D Design, 2D Design-Photography.)
  • the exam requires a large body of work to be produced specific to the exam type so at ASIJ students have the opportunity to take the class over 2 years and submit the exam in the second year. (16 pieces of work for 3D Design, and 24 pieces of work for 2D and Drawing.)

This means there are potentially up to eight different groups of students for me to teach in 1 class period. Here is a diagram created in Gliffy to illustrate.

Call me crazy but I am actually quite excited about the problem this creates. It compels me to find new ways to help personalize Continue reading »

Posted by Glen at 6:37 am Tagged with: , ,

Curriculum 21

Main stage, Teaching & learning, Technology No Responses »
Jul 102010

I’m reading Curriculum 21 in between holiday ficition. It’s a collection of writers led by Heidi Hayes Jacobs on preparing students for our times…and their future.

Here is a snipit I read this morning over breakfast in Chapter 7 Making Learning Irresistible by Tim Tyson from Mabry Middle School in Georgia, USA.

If digitial technology is used in low-level ways–to do the same things we have always been doing in schools, just doing them now with computers–then we have failed to grasp the metamorphosis this technological ecosystem offers.

After a week in London thinking, talking and exploring ways to integrate ‘Technology in the International Classroom’ at the Teacher Training Center this sounds like very useful and inspiring revision.

Posted by Glen at 11:31 pm Tagged with: , ,

Technology in the International Classroom

Main stage, Teaching & learning, Technology, Technology & Web 2.0 Things No Responses »
Jul 042010

I’m in London with three other ASIJ high school folk at a course on technology. My assignment is to plan a unit that uses technology to address a content standard and tech standard which I will teach next year. I have revised the Critiquing unit for the AP Studio Art classes.


Content Standard: Critical Thinkers and Problem Solvers – reflect upon and assess the characteristics and merit of your work and the work of others.

Tech, Media & Info Standard: Communication, Collaboration, and Ethical Use: Students use TMI tools to communicate and work collaboratively and ethically, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.

My next job is to gather other tools,  ideas and strategies that might be useful as we move toward 1:1 next year.

Posted by Glen at 1:29 pm Tagged with: , ,

post-impressions of a museum visit

Art & illustration, Main stage No Responses »
Jun 182010

What’s the biggest difference in visiting museums in Tokyo compared to….well most other places? The number of people you rub shoulders with!  

On the good advice of my Japanese teacher, Matsumoto Sensei, I decided to arrive at opening time (10AM) to see,   

at The National Art Center. You can get off the subway right below the museum for easy access – they even sell entrance tickets in the tunnel leading to the main entrance. Why? Because Japanese young people, housewives and retirees flock to see block buster shows like this one.  

Despite being there early, when I entered the first room of paintings, the crowd was already at least 15 people deep. Quite overwhelmed, I skirted around the edges and chose carefully what I wanted to line for. I was definitely impressed, but not so much by seeing these works in the flesh again, rather by the volume of spectators moving around the rooms in such orderly fashion, most with handheld lecture devices held tightly to their ears.  

Post impressions? I wasn’t disappointed; I got to stand for sometime (during a lull) in front of some favorite works by Maurice Denis & Henri Rousseau. So today was just another art and culture experience in Japan…one that was just a little more on the culture side, that’s all. 

Posted by Glen at 7:53 am Tagged with:

Here comes everbody...

Main stage, Technology No Responses »
Jun 162010

http://www.domesticatingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/HereComesEverybody.png

The iPad has entered my life…and what a life it has become. I am a ‘paddy’ convert. I was contemplating buying a Kindle but held off because I had a hunch that the iPad with its wifi, email, internet capabilites would be worth having. When I heard I could load the Kindle app I was set on it.

It seems quite appropriate then that I am reading Here Comes Everybody on my iPad via the Kindle app. My browsing for the book on the iPad included previewing  Clay Shirky on Youtube…oh how book shopping as changed.

Posted by Glen at 12:40 am Tagged with: ,

Liberal Arts Education

Main stage, Teaching & learning No Responses »
Jun 092010

The article ‘ Coming to the defence of Liberal Education’ caught my eye this morning from the Huffington Post.  Exams are now over…I wonder how many bubble sheets our high school used this year and what that might measure?

For Fish it means becoming fluent in the fundamentals even before moving on to post-secondary education: understanding the grammar of intellectual, artistic and social practices so that one can participate in them, or at least understand them from the inside. Both commentators, like many others writing today, worry that in our results oriented regime, the study of history, literature and the arts is being compromised or eliminated in favor of narrow skills that fit into so-called objective tests. Instead of giving students the opportunity to have strong emotional and cognitive encounters with well-told stories, instead of helping them find their way to becoming absorbed in great works of art, we have drilled young people into thinking that effective reading and writing are techniques with measurable outcomes to be evaluated on standardized tests. A liberal education produces results, too, but they are less reducible to questions that can be answered by coloring in a bubble with a number 2 pencil.

Posted by Glen at 11:35 pm Tagged with:
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